Congressional Testimony

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called upon our nation to join with the world in ending extreme poverty in the next two decades. Today, we have new tools that enable us to achieve a goal that was simply unimaginable in the past: the eradication of extreme poverty and its most devastating corollaries, including widespread hunger and preventable child and maternal deaths.

The President’s fiscal year 2014 budget request responds to this call and the most critical development challenges of our time. It supports important global partnerships, including the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and the Child Survival Call to Action, by increasing and focusing investments in food security and maternal and child health. It builds resilience in areas besieged by recurrent crisis and natural disaster, with a focus on the Horn of Africa and Sahel regions. And it advances a comprehensive food aid reform package that will enable us to feed two to four million additional people each year.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called upon our nation to join with the world in ending extreme poverty in the next two decades. Today, we have new tools that enable us to achieve a goal that was simply unimaginable in the past: the eradication of extreme poverty and its most devastating corollaries, including widespread hunger and preventable child and maternal deaths.

The President’s fiscal year 2014 budget request responds to this call and the most critical development challenges of our time. It supports important global partnerships, including the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and the Child Survival Call to Action, by increasing and focusing investments in food security and maternal and child health. It builds resilience in areas besieged by recurrent crisis and natural disaster, with a focus on the Horn of Africa and Sahel regions. And it advances a comprehensive food aid reform package that will enable us to feed two to four million additional people each year.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama called upon our nation to join with the world in ending extreme poverty in the next two decades. Today, we have new tools that enable us to achieve a goal that was simply unimaginable in the past: the eradication of extreme poverty and its most devastating corollaries, including widespread hunger and preventable child and maternal deaths.

The President’s fiscal year 2014 budget request responds to this call and the most critical development challenges of our time. It supports important global partnerships, including the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition and the Child Survival Call to Action, by increasing and focusing investments in food security and maternal and child health. It builds resilience in areas besieged by recurrent crisis and natural disaster, with a focus on the Horn of Africa and Sahel regions. And it advances a comprehensive food aid reform package that will enable us to feed two to four million additional people each year.

We have just passed the two-year anniversary since the onset of the Syrian conflict. Sadly, the country continues to face a grim situation and an escalating humanitarian crisis. The dreams of those who first began with hopeful demonstrations on the street of Damascus are far from being realized. The statistics are numbing: more than 70,000 dead; more than 4 million people inside the country in need of assistance; and more than 2.5 million displaced from their homes. We have already reached the somber milestone of more than one million refugees in neighboring countries, with greater numbers of refugees fleeing the violence each day.

We are facing a grim and escalating humanitarian crisis in Syria. The statistics are numbing: more than 70,000 dead; more than four million people inside the country in need of assistance, including over 2.5 million displaced from their homes. We have already surpassed the somber milestone of more than a million refugees who have fled to the relative safety of neighboring countries, with greater numbers of refugees fleeing the violence each day.

And behind these statistics are the stories of individual Syrians who have lost their homes, their livelihoods and all too often their loved ones. I had a sobering visit to the camps in Turkey and Jordan a month ago with Assistant Secretary Anne Richard and Ambassador Robert Ford. We stood at the border late one night as thousands of Syrians walked across into Jordan, including one young woman who was six months pregnant and fearful she would lose her child.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee: Thank you for the invitation to testify today. I am grateful for the Committee's interest in the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) approach in Latin America and the Caribbean and pleased to have this opportunity to discuss the Obama Administration's development policy in the Americas. As always, I am eager to hear your advice and counsel as well.

Mali is facing a complex emergency: a political crisis, recovery from a major drought, and threats to internal and regional security. I would like to provide an update on the current situation and how it has affected our programming, as well as outline the key factors that are needed for development to progress.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently released a report estimating that there are now approximately 870 million hungry people in the world, 98 percent of them living in developing countries. While these numbers have adjusted down from recent estimates, it is still 870 million too many. Compounding this problem, research indicates that by the year 2050, the world's population is projected to increase by 38 percent to more than 9 billion, which, combined with changing diets, will require up to a 60 percent increase in food production to feed us all. We confront these challenges in a world that has less land and fewer resources available for production.

Consistent with the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa, USAID's development activities target the root causes of the popular frustration with the Government of Nigeria that stokes instability in the North, Middle Belt and Niger Delta regions: poor governance, insufficient respect for human and civil rights, inadequate delivery of basic services, and a lack of economic opportunity, particularly for young Nigerians. Creating a culture of peace that acknowledges and transcends Nigeria's ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity is critical for stability, democracy, and economic development.

Mali is facing a complex emergency: a political crisis, a major drought, and threats to internal and regional security. These interrelated crises call for a careful and considered development response. According to the World Bank, countries that have become characterized as fragile states require 20 to 25 years to recover, at great cost to their own people as well as to the international community in terms of resources diverted to stabilize and get those states back on the track of effective, transparent governance. While Mali is not currently a fragile state, it is in a fragile situation.